Free The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card Page A

when no one was looking, and then scampered back inside the bark before dawn? If she made a noise he might stop coming out, and no one would believe her when she told what she had seen.
    So she watched him in silence. His body rotated so his shoulder and arm were straight out. And when he got his right leg out, too, he rotated even more, so now he faced outward. Both legs came free, and then both arms, and … and he was dangling, painfully it seemed to Eko, by his neck, for no part of his head had come forth from the bark. And without the tree holding up any part of his lower body, the boy struggled and wriggled but had no leverage. He slapped and pushed against the bark, but he couldn’t get his head free.
    Eko worried that he might be suffocating. Or strangling. Or simply helpless, and what would he do if he could never get his head out of the oak? Hang there till he starved? Or until some bear decided to eat him? If there were bears in the land of the thornmages. She had never heard of a bear in the Forest Deep, but you never knew.
    By the time she thought of bears she was already halfway to the tree. Still none of the family awoke, so she was alone when she stood under the boy in the tree and tried to reach up to help him. She couldn’t, of course, so she went back and woke Father, pressing her finger against his lips to keep him from speaking.
    She led Father to the tree, and then showed him what she wanted, without saying a word. He lifted her and sat her on his shoulders. Now she could reach the boy’s feet and help hold up his weight.
    Now he could reach up his hands and push against the bark much nearer to his head. Eko could hear Father beginning to pant with the exertion of bearing both her weight and half the boy’s. “Come out come out,” she whispered. “The moon’s about.” The rhyme was supposed to be about the sun, but Eko was adaptable.
    The bark didn’t tear, it merely opened, or not even that, it simply receded so that his face emerged as if from water. He was not a beautiful boy. His face was stretched. His nose scooped downward and out as if it were some sort of bird’s perch. And when he got free, he was pushing so hard against the bark that he toppled all three of them down into the meadow.
    Still no one woke.
    Eko got up and went to the boy. He was naked, curled up in the grass. She touched his shin. He gasped and quickly withdrew his leg as if her touch had stung him.
    She sat down before him, looking at him, marveling. None of the stories said that the Man in the Tree was just a boy.
    â€œIs that a dingle or a dong?” whispered Father. “Is he a man yet or not?”
    Eko shook her head. It’s not as if she knew anything about how a boy became a man. She was having trouble enough making sense of the nasty things involved in becoming a woman.
    At the sound of Father’s voice, the boy slowly moved his hands to his ears and covered them. Then he tucked his body into a ball, ears tightly covered, eyes squinted shut.
    â€œHe wants to be alone,” Father whispered.
    Eko nodded her understanding, but not her agreement. As if Father understood both messages, he crept back to the spot where he had been sleeping near Mother, while Eko continued to sit and watch.
    Eko woke at the first light of dawn. The boy was gone. Instinctively she looked at the tree to see if it had been real or a dream.
    Real. There was no manshape now. Nor was there even a scar in the tree where the boy had broken free.
    The boy had not stayed to speak to her. Had not stayed for daylight. Somehow she had fallen asleep and he had crept away while her eyes were closed. It hurt deep inside her, to have been present at his—what, birth? emergence, anyway—only to have him sneak away while she slept. She never heard his voice. More to the point, he had never shown a sign of hearing her, or remembering that she had helped him get free of the oak.
    I didn’t